Search Articles
SEBRING, Fla. (CN) — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO on Monday, accusing the creator of ChatGPT of putting profit over public safety.
In the 83-page complaint, filed in rural Highlands County, Uthmeier says the company ignored warnings from experts about the potential for the program to facilitate suicide and “deadly rampages,” all while collecting data to increase its market share in the arms race over artificial intelligence.
“OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians,” Uthmeier said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit.
The complaint includes claims for unfair trade practices, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation and a public nuisance. It also seeks to hold CEO Sam Altman personally liable for unspecified damages.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his remarks, Uthmeier pointed to last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University that left two people dead and seven injured. Prosecutors say the gunman used ChatGPT to help plan the attack, including by asking about the best time and place to maximize casualties and what weapons to use.
“If it was a human being on the other side of that conversation, we would be charging them for conspiracy to commit murder,” Uthmeier said.
The attorney general opened a criminal probe against the company over those claims in April.
“People are getting hurt, parents are getting deceived and they need to pay for it,” Uthmeier said. “They need to pay for it by opening up their checkbook and changing the program to ensure parental controls and we are not endangering our kids.”
Uthmeier called the lawsuit “monumental” and predicted other states would soon follow.
In addition to concerns over safety, the complaint blames OpenAI for contributing to “cognitive decline” and “behavioral addiction.”
OpenAI’s website points to the positive role artificial intelligence can play in users’ lives, the attorney general notes, but “these advertisements do not disclose that ChatGPT can be wrong, can make mistakes, or that it can provide false, nonsensical or hallucinated information.”
“This unreliability can lead to serious consequences across society,” Uthmeier writes. “For example, the court system has become saturated with attorneys who rely on ChatGPT to conduct cursory legal research only to learn later that ChatGPT “hallucinates” and generates fake but realistic seeming lawsuits. This ChatGPT-aided research has led to attorneys in Florida and around the country being sanctioned by courts.”
OpenAI already faces a series of lawsuits from individuals, including parents of those killed in the FSU shooting in Florida over the FSU shooting. The company has been sued over giving wrong medical advice that led to the drug overdose of a teen in Texas and led another teen in California to kill his mother. ChatGPT is also blamed for aiding the planning of a mass shooting in Canada.
On its website, the company addresses safety concerns, maintaining programmers “teach our AI right from wrong, filtering harmful content and responding with empathy.”
Follow @alexbpickettSubscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.
